How did GW2 managed to build its hype "without" GW1?

At first I would like to point out that I am a Guild Wars fan (perhaps even a fanboy) and I have big hopes for GW2 so by no means I am looking to question potential merits of this game. I am just curious. What exactly happened and when did it happened that caused GW2 to be such a highly anticipated game? I mean, GW2 is all over the place right now. One could even get an impression that it is regarded by some as a savior of the MMO genre. I keep asking myself how did this happen. I played GW1 since its release in 2005 and I loved it. But the fact remains, that I know very few people who actually ever even tried that game. Over the years of playing WoW I met dozens of players, some of them very hardcore. Many of them played different MMO games as well or at least tested them. And yet I know only maybe four folks who tried GW1 (aside from the community which I had in GW1 itself naturally).

And now we have GW2 launching next week and I suddenly realize that everyone and their mom wants to play it. Some on-line friends I didnt heard from since months are contacting me and asking about server choice in GW2 and things like that. Honestly, I am a bit in a WTF state becouse of this. What exactly happened and why? Is PR work from A.net really that good? Not that I mind if it is, I would like their game to succeed. But the fact is, I spent few thousand hours in GW. I loved their lore, their game mechanics and style. That is why I believe in Arena and I believe they have what it takes to make GW2 an awesome game. And there are many people like me around the world I guess. But why people who never had any interest in GW (or some of them wasnt even aware of such game existence few years ago) are now suddenly going like "OMG GW2 GW2 GW2!!!"? Is this some sort of self-propelled hype mechanism? Someone noticed when it exactly started and how? In case of a sequel (which GW2 is) shouldnt the good experience from the original game be a key element needed to build up such hype? And as I mentioned before, most of people hyped by GW2 that I know never even knew or cared about GW1.

In the end I really do hope that GW2 will succeed. I would like to play this game for years to come and for Arena.net to have motivation to release more and more good expansions. I am just curious (and a bit cautios at the same time) about all that hype that surrounds it in the recent months.

Well, a big reason is the innovation and how it differs from the typical MMO design. I look at Rift and TOR and I try to find differences between them and WoW. I see GW2 and I try to find similarities.

It has definitely snowballed I think. For me, I never played GW1, I never even thought about playing it, I'm a fairly long-term die-hard WoW nee Diablo 3 player but I look at every new MMO - and most new games - that come out, because I love gaming. GW2 sold me on it's own merits as early as 6 months ago and the videos and changes over that time have only improved for me.

And it is a definitely a self perpetuating mechanism, in that we now have potentially 1million+ pre-orders, once you get to a certain stage, you have enough people, who tell enough friends, each of those friends have another friend... that the hype catches on and it snowballs. I have several friends who swore they would not be playing GW2 who have in the last few weeks not just jumped on the hype train (I hope), but the hype (probably me talking about it non stop) has made them go look up videos.. and those have sparked their interest, and then they've told a few friends.... that is how things go viral and that can happen very quickly.

But I do believe that GW2 is selling people on its merits, there are a LOT of good quality videos out there now and big names like Yogscast with their fairly large subscriber base I definitely think have helped, which are attracting a lot of viewers, it's different enough from the other big MMO games to capture interest and it's coming at a fantastic timing when a lot of big mmo players are feeling a bit depressed with their current games, even with the similarity in release dates to other things.

By seeing the creators , live in frond of the camera speaking about their <<small treasure >> , is 10000x more priceless than having an octupus in a CG video destroying a city

Last edited by Plzbegentle; 2012-08-19 at 06:43 AM.

GW2 : Plzbegentle - Ruins of Surmia EU - Sylvari EngineerWoW: Vergin - Deathwing EU - Elf Resto Druid (27/05/05 - 02/04/12 Perma-Banned- Unhappy whinning PvP customer - whos begged from 4.1 to get rid of the RNG of Regrowth ... )It seems ppl have the energy to whine for a game , for not beeing exactly like their <<main>> game , while it dont have a SUB , and they dont have the courage to whine at their Game Master for slacking and producing few PvE content ...

This is so tiring... that forum is full of trolls and child impossible to have a discussion without having single liner trying to look intelligent.
I think it's time to be more like TL and permaban that kind of behaviour.

On topic, I agree with this:

Right style of game @ the right time and money.

It certainly comes at the right time, with something different and free. No wonder its hyped.

I tested GW1, briefly, but probably fall into the ladder where you would group people who obviously prioritized WoW. It is really quite simple: while Guild Wars (the original) was not as well known for everyone most people I know will quickly mention it as one of the many MMO's they have heard of. Come to think of it, Guild Wars was better than WoW at organized PR in magazines, etc, where I come from. Especially in gaming magazines Guild Wars often had a double-paged commercial ad in every single issue. So I actually disagree with your evaluation of how well-known Guild Wars is. A game can be very well-known even if it does not have the same playerbase as WoW. Guild Wars is one of those MMO-games to me.

That is one of the reasons why I think there has been so much hype. ANET and Guild Wars are not unknown entities within MMO-gaming. Then there is a second point, which is of course game design. GW2 has a few (understatement in the eyes of some) innovations, yes, but it also takes on some fairly old ideas and bring them back. Ideas which have watered down in favour of accessability and convenience in games such as WoW. The sense of exploration GW2 gives when you try it is evident. It feels almost overwhelmingly massive, which is a very good thing for an MMO game as long as you have the needed tools to avoid grief when this level of explorative excitement dwindles away (which will happen at some point). Now, every new game has this feeling of fresh exploration in some manner, but how GW2 choose to implement it is very good combined with the rest of the game (quest design, secrets, etc).

Then there is a third factor: the Internet, which is a giant schoolyard of immature kids (gamers) bickering about which daddy (game titles) is the best. Never underestimate the jungle telegraph when you combine it with a social innovation like the Internet. A brief glance at youtube comments under MMO-related videos, or a glance on forums such a these gives a good impression of why the hype continued to grow.

It is really very simple. The MMO market has been in a stalemate for 7 years because of WoW's grip. There are titles coming out now that are more than just pure WoW-clones. Even SW:TOR had a fresh focus on story. Tera has its combat which is arguably better than GW2 depending on who you ask, The Secret World has its puzzly natured quest-design where it implements the idea of blending in real life reference work to solve a puzzle (unfortunately scarred by specific forums or databases which give the solution away at some point, perhaps).

GW2 is hyped (not in the sense that it will not live up to expectations, but rather in the sense that people are excited which is the true meaning of the word itself) because people like to place their hopes on it, due to exasperation over the trend of lacking innovative design and creative soul. That along with a solid PR foundation and credability in the name itself makes for a powerful potential hype which many other titles can not compete with (there are certain similarities with WoW's launch here).

Last edited by Atelniar; 2012-08-19 at 07:29 AM.

There is common sense and ignorance. Choose one and accept the consequences.

Or it was us who played and loved GW1, which is more likely, but as Awe say, please keep those game vs game thread away.

Awe, i think a lot of it comes from us who played GW1 alot too, and Arenanet has done the word to mouth thing, which is highly underrated by so many, also they're good at using the media in their favor, there is also the fact that GW2 just is a very different game than many, and it differs alot from the "traditional" MMO's.

A whole 'lot of this. I don't think their timing could have been more perfect.

Originally Posted by Awe

Please. Leave WoW vs. GW2 paradigm out of it. Thats not the intention of this thread. WoW is a separate issue and there is definitely too much hate flying around in both directions already.

Don't worry about them. <100 posts and attempting to /stirpot most likely means they are ban dodgers. They'll never wrap their head around the fact that many people are more excited after having gotten a lot of hands-on experience already.

For me, I knew ArenaNet were former Blizzard employees (the core at least), so they had the "when it's ready" attitude, and I also knew that GW1 had done fairly well for what it was. I started reading their website back when it was 2-3 articles with PvPOnline cartoons and was hooked by the fact that they wanted to completely change how MMORPGs currently worked. It just wasn't doing what was done before with a small twist. And they had had previous success with an alternative model, so I figured they could actually pull it off.

A lot of the recent interest is probably from the hype that's snowballing from the original adopters explaining why it's a paradigm change in the MMORPG market, not just another WoW clone. And now there's more and more stuff to back it up and it looks so polished.

The announcement of Guild Wars 2 back in '06 actually pushed me away from the Franchise entirely. Getting rid of my instanced world, getting rid of a low level cap so that we can "grind longer in a persistent world and get stronger all the way up to 80"?

No thanks. At the time, with barely even scraps of info at announcement (and a lol-sidekicking system), I wasn't actually having any of that. I dropped out before Eye came out, and despite buying Eye at launch I to this day have not put more than four hours into it (18/30 HoM though, lolz). It wasn't until I started reading a PC Gamer article on it, I think it was mid '09(?), that I started actually diving in on "Huh, this might be worth seeing what they pull off". Most of that info was a little off-base from what we know now to be true, but it was the Manifesto vid itself (posted above) that actually locked me in on "This can really work, this is what I've been missing".

And as long as Colin smiles as he swings that sword, as long as Ree's still super ecstatic to interrupt Jeff to let her finish what she has to say, and the entire team pours its heart out into what they've been giving us so far, by Lyss I know a few people that'll be here for years to come.

Timing, passion, dedication to giving us the best they can... how did Guild Wars 2 manage to build itself? By being the MMORPG we need right now, even if it's not the one we deserve.

It's a phenomenon. The perfect storm of being at the right time with a finely crafted gem of a game, so different from the same old tired model we've played too long, created by an enthusiastic, talented team with an eye for detail and thoughtful construction of concepts, backed by a mission statement that's not merely words but evidenced in every facet of the game.

GW2 is hyped (not in the sense that it will not live up to expectations, but rather in the sense that people are excited which is the true meaning of the word itself) because people like to place their hopes on it, due to exasperation over the trend of lacking innovative design and creative soul.

I pretty much agree with this (almost all of your points, except TOR's focus on story being a good thing; I believe that is what crippled the game from the start).

A friend of mine played GW1 back in the day, played it fairly regularly up until now. He's excited as hell for GW2, and I'm...less so. I played a couple beta weekends and got my feet wet, but I don't know yet if it'd be right for me. I cancelled my pre-order (needed the money for other things), but I might pick it up later.

In general, I avoid games that get over-hyped until the dust settles. GW2 is being touted as another WoW-killer, even if it doesn't want to be, even if Anet has no intention of it being one. Without dragging up a WoW vs. GW2 debate, I will say that I'm sure that many people who are going to play GW2 at launch are those who have been burned out of WoW and desperately want something new to play; the friend who got me into WoW is one of them. Will they find it? I dunno. It played alright to me, but lacked something I can't really place. I think it was something about the combat that felt off. Something felt odd, but that could just be me.

Point is, we've reached a snowball effect where this MMO has been in development for years, and the hype has kept on building, and people see it as something new, and they keep on building hype, and now we have this giant hype train that won't stop until next Tuesday. I'll check in in a couple of months to see how it's doing, but for now, I'm staying out.

I pretty much agree with this (almost all of your points, except TOR's focus on story being a good thing; I believe that is what crippled the game from the start).

Well, I never said what it did for that specific game. I just pointed out that it was a fresh choice of direction. My reason for this is that I am a huge follower of storytelling.

This debate is about GW2 and its achieved hype though and I tend to agree with you in how I like to avoid getting my own hopes up too much until launch at least. This often means avoiding extensive play during beta weekends. I played a total of 16 hours, give or take, during all the beta events for GW2 and surprisingly enough I did not run into something the game lacked in my case. However, I did purposefully avoid going further than testing basic quest design, combat design, and the initial story concept. I don't powergame during beta events, it ruins the launch experience greatly.

There is common sense and ignorance. Choose one and accept the consequences.